Blast off: Tim Peake's ISS journey starts in

But for Commander Tim Peake, learning to speak Russian fluently was by far the biggest challenge.

All astronauts travelling to the International Space Station (ISS) much hitch a ride with the Russians. But because all the controls of the Soyuz spacecraft are in Russian, astronauts face the daunting takes of learning a new language before they are allowed into space.

“I felt like walking out halfway through,” he said of his language training. “The more further down the training we go the more technical the Russian language becomes.

“Learning Russian has been the single most difficult aspect of my training. I love systems, I love diagrams, I’m not a natural linguist and Russian for me has been particularly hard. It’s probably the part that I’ve found the toughest, and at times, the least enjoyable.”

Tim Peake

Learning to ‘spacewalk’ was also physically demanding. A replica of the ISS has been sunk into a 12m deep pool at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, and astronauts train on it for six hours at a time.

“It takes an awfully long time to train somebody how to operate in a spacesuit outside the International Space Station, with all the tools and equipment,” he said.

Commander Peake is also dreading the stomach-churning task of recycling urine to provide drinking water for the crew to conserve water.

“I’ve heard the urine transfer tasks can get a bit mundane and repetitive,” he said. “We’re working towards a 100 per cent closed, self-sufficient life support systems, which is what we’d need for a Mars mission. With the water, we’re up to around 90 per cent self-sufficiency which is all by processing our urine back into drinking water.”

However, the British astronaut will be enjoying a few home comforts. He has had a china teacup sent up to the ISS ahead of his arrival, so he can enjoy a proper cup of tea and his meals have been devised by Michelin starred chef Heston Blumenthal.